Mac Demarco’s “On the Level” Is One Lonely Voyage

Mac DeMarco described “On the Level” as “kind of a sister song” to “Chamber of Reflection,” the woozy center of gravity of his 2014 album Salad Days. The comparison checks out, and not just because both songs bob as unsteadily as buoys in an oily harbor. Avoid the temptation to invoke yacht rock here, because leisurely breezes couldn’t be further from ol’ Mac’s mind. Where “Chamber of Reflection” was about solitude, “On the Level” is a meditation on self-reliance. If this is a boat trip, it’s a one-man circumnavigation of the globe, final destination unknown.

“This record has a lot to do with my family and my life now and the way I’m feeling,” DeMarco has said, and it’s possible to interpret “On the Level” as a way of coming to terms with both his widened horizons and his strained relationship with his father. “Boy, this could be your year,” DeMarco sings at the outset, over lite-funk keys and a curdled synthesizer melody; “Make an old man proud of you/Forget about your tears.” By the song’s end, as he weaves through the umpteenth repetition of that single set of chords, contemplation turns to determination: “Carrying a name/Followed to my final day/And who’s there left to blame?” It’s a sobering assessment, coming from an artist who used to be best known for drunken pratfalls and chain-smoking intensity. But the self-examination seems fitting, given the circumstances of the record, which the 26-year-old musician demoed on the floor of his bedroom in Queens and then largely remade following his move to Los Angeles. Looming over the margins of his new song, you can just barely make out the blurry shadows of palm trees rustled by an unfamiliar wind.

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